The Reverend Having Sent a Reply, I Match the Rhymes Again上人見和。復次韻。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 87 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 9 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
I chanted on the snow blossom, and you replied at once;
your words are truly fine and subtle, but what you have seen is narrow.
It is only that Heaven, in its dealing with the ten thousand things,
has not necessarily given them over to a moment.
The flower is gone because of the wind and the snow is gone because of the sun;
what is to be done, since they cannot escape being changed along with things?
The principle of the two things is of itself like this,
so why do you not argue the matter out here?
If there were no wind and no sun,
they would all of them keep their own natures, each one.
And a man's life, in this, is likewise so:
I say that keeping to it is the true, and going crookedly is the false.
Look upon things and upon yourself alike as remote—
it was this saying alone that roused me.
Interlinear notes 4
師所押旁韻
This is the side rhyme the Master followed.
音去聲
The sound of it is the departing tone.
來詩有云
The poem he sent has these words in it.
所見寡 — This is also read as praise, 「few are those who can recognize words as fine as these」. Since the line that follows continues with 「但是 (it is only that)」, the reading that corrects his words has been taken here. — Translator